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11:17 p.m. - 2011-11-13
Mind Bites

Take 5 candy bars are AWSOME! A confection of chocolate wrapped around peanut butter, caramel, chopped nuts, and a pretzel, oy! How this yumminess passed me by until recently is unknown. I am making up for lost time.

I do wear color. Honest. The other day I noticed that in almost all my profile pics on FB and in most of the pics I've posted here I am wearing black. I've been puzzling this out. Conclusion: Most of my 'leave the house' clothing is black. Shlepping around at home I wear tie-dye and garishly hued t-shirts, seersucker housecoats, and Mick's old sweats and t-shirts. But if I am going to take a self-portrait I do it when I've done my hair and put my face on. Namely, when I have gotten ready to go out. And when I go out I usually opt for black.

Black is practical for someone with a prow like mine. The boobage has its own agenda and tends to help itself to my food. Black is classic, it rarely goes out of style. I own three Little Black Dresses and two Long Black Dresses. Styles and weights for every occasion and season. My favorite LBD is 17 years old and still looks great. Only a crazy woman doesn't own a black coat. My pea coat disintegrated two winters ago and the long cardigan I wear as outerwear these days is black. (That sweater makes a good base for pashminas too.) Black covers a multitude of sins. For instance recently the fit of my jeans has gone all sloppy and bulgy so I stick with any long top that comes down to my thighs...and surprise! 90% of them are black too. So there you go. At home I'm a fiesta of color! Cross my threshold into the big bad world and I wrap myself in black.

My pantry and freezers are loaded. (Actually I don't have a pantry any more and I really miss having one.) Anyway, the larder is stocked. On Saturday morning Mick and I got up early and did a Sam's Club run. Very, very few goodies, tons of staples and the building blocks of at least 15 dinners. Then later while Mick was off communing with the Focus and doing his personal errands Wolf and I went to Shoprite and got the skerse stuff Sam's didn't have and stuff I won't buy at Sam's like fresh produce and dairy. No idea why I needed to do a Donner Party shopping. Perhaps it's the short daylight and the time change.

The latter of which I am having a dickens of a time adjusting to. My circadian rhythm is all off. I wake up at 4:00am and want to go to bed at 7:00pm. No, I don't want to go to bed, my night world has been ugly lately, but I'm falling asleep by 7:00. I feel like such an Old Fuck nodding off in my chair after dinner. Heh, to be honest I feel like an Old Fuck most of the time anyhow. But the time change isn't helping.

I have mixed feelings about how Princess pretty much ignores commands from Mick and Wolf but she obeys me instantly. Mick and Wolf call and cajole until they're purple in the face and Princess just keeps running around the yard and won't do her business or come inside until I make an appearance and tell her to obey.

Okay, it's flattering in a way. It's obvious she's not obeying out of fear. The dog is nuts about me. Princess does what I tell her and just grins and grins. She's so proud. Tail wagging, happy smile on her chops, "See me? First I went pee and then I came inside and now I'm sitting! Just like Mom said to. YAY! Look at me, I'm Mom's good dog!"

On the other hand, having to be in charge of the dog's self-esteem too, feh, it just makes me tired. "Princess, baby cakes, why don't you listen to Daddy or Wolf? Why don't you look to them for approval? Ask them for a cookie, okay?"

No such luck. Princess is a one-woman dog. And that woman is me.

Been watching a lot of foreign movies recently. If I ever got the chance I think I'd do okay at being a world traveler. If talking was the only requirement to do well. Lord knows I am an American when it comes to convenience and sanitation. I'd end up dying of constipation if I had to use a squat toilet. No 24-hour grocery stores? No Geek Squad? Yikes! But when it comes to language and communication I'm a whiz. Not claiming fluency. Not even close. My spoken vocabulary in anything but English and German/Yiddish is laughable. But I recognize and understand just about anything I hear. I get the gist. Mostly because people talk about the same stuff everywhere. "Are you hot? Cold? Let's go! Calm down. Do you like this? Are you hungry? I'm tired. Where's the john? What time is it? That guy is an asshole. I want to: buy this, stop here, have sex with..." A hundred languages and a thousand dialects and we all talk about the same stuff.

Puts me to mind when I was the assistant manager of a store in an outlet mall. A world famous outlet mall. Not bragging, it's pretty sick that people would come all the way from Peru and Luxembourg to buy Timberland boots and Polo jeans. Anyhoodle, during my stint there I learned the basic retail phrases in 17 different languages. Including Swahili. And could stutter out rudimentary pleasantries in a few more. Hey, along with languages coming easily, I wasn't about to lose a sale because I couldn't say, "Yes, we ship internationally" in Romanian. Or Korean. Or Portuguese. Know thy customer. That's just good business.

I don't miss being on my feet or the drudgery of stocking shelves and doing inventory, and God help me if I ever had to deal with some 26 year old nimrod manager with a head full of sawdust and a rah-rah corporate brainwashed attitude ever ever again, but sometimes I miss the people. The customers. I liked making a sale. I got high on helping someone make a purchase that made them feel good. That they went away with the perfect gift or the exact right thing they'd enjoy every time they used it. To me it wasn't about bamboozling someone into parting with their cash, truly. I was just as pleased to help a customer find an apple corer as I was selling them a car. If a customer went away feeling smart, satisfied they'd done themselves a good thing, then I was happy.

I like helping. But I'm lousy with the long-term. Just ask the 100s of friends I've disappointed when I drifted away. I thrive on and only do well with immediacy. For one semester during college I considered nursing. Changed my mind when I realized I only wanted to do triage. The thought of being a floor nurse or working geriatrics in an elder care facility made me run away screaming. The day in, day out of patient care required far more patience and dedication than I'd ever have.

I'm still trying to be okay with this. How does one make peace with being a flibbertigibbet? That the best of me is glib and transitory? I try to take comfort in the idea that there's sprinters and marathoners and nobody expects runners to do equally well at both. But I know better. I know the truly good people are the ones who sustain things. That the great artists are the ones who put in years on their novels and their frescoes. The game changers and heroes of the world put in the time it takes to change hearts and minds. Aside from my kids and my shitty marriage to Mike the most long-term thing I've ever managed was to keep this blog. Right? Egotistic much? Eleven years of yammering about myself. Gee, like that's hard. Or worthy.